UNITED NATIONS, April 26. /TASS/. Western countries are reluctant to bring to account those responsible for the acts of sabotage at the Nord Stream gas pipelines, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said.
"In February, the UN Security Council was notified about the cessation of national investigations in Denmark and Sweden. And what have they found out? Absolutely nothing. The only concrete outcome was the conclusion made several days after the terrorist attack that the Nord Stream pipes were deliberately destroyed by explosive devices," he said.
"And despite this fact, they said that they have no grounds for continuing criminal proceedings within their jurisdictions. In other words, the crime was committed but they are not going to identify those responsible and punish them," Nebenzya noted.
According to the Russian diplomat, the situation is as though a year-long probe into a murder yielded a conclusion that "the victim was murdered." "This a scenario for an absurdist theater," he added.
On September 27, 2022, Nord Stream AG reported "unprecedented damage" on three strings of the offshore gas pipelines of the Nord Stream system. Later, Swedish seismologists said they had identified two explosions on the route of the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26, 2022. Following the incident, the Russian prosecutor general’s office opened a case on charges of international terrorism. Germany, Denmark, and Sweden launched their own national probes but refused to involve Russia.
On February 8, 2023, US investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh published an article that claimed, citing anonymous sources, that US Navy divers had planted explosive devices under the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines under the cover of the BALTOPS exercise in June 2022, and that the Norwegians then activated the bombs three months later. According to the journalist, Danish and Swedish authorities were aware of US’ activities in the Baltic Sea several months before the Nord Stream blasts. That is why, in his words, they opted to fail their probes.
The New York Times said later, citing US officials, that the act of sabotage at the gas pipelines could have been committed by a "pro-Ukrainian group" acting independently.